TY - GEN
T1 - SEARCHAIN
T2 - 19th International Conference on Provable and Practical Security, ProvSec 2025
AU - Zhao, Jun
AU - Yu, Jiangshan
AU - Yuan, Xingliang
AU - Liu, Joseph K.
AU - Zuo, Cong
AU - Cui, Hui
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2026.
PY - 2026
Y1 - 2026
N2 - In recent years, blockchain-based cloud storage systems have seen rapid development. However, existing systems lack a crucial feature: keyword search, primarily due to file encryption. To address this limitation while maintaining privacy, significant research attention has turned to blockchain-based symmetric searchable encryption (SSE) schemes. However, achieving service fairness in the blockchain security model poses challenges, particularly in ensuring security for both users and service providers, while both can be malicious. To address this challenge, this paper introduces SEARCHAIN, a novel blockchain-based SSE system. We introduce a new role in the scenario, verifier, for the blockchain nodes. With the assistance of honest verifiers, service fairness can be guaranteed. We propose a novel committee selection algorithm for the system to select verifier committee members, ensuring their voting powers are proportional to the number of active SSE services they manage. Verifiers are required to perform result verification work for SSE services to participate in mining. With this approach, the committee selection algorithm provides both security and incentives for the system. We implement a prototype of SEARCHAIN and deploy the system to a local test network. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of SEARCHAIN.
AB - In recent years, blockchain-based cloud storage systems have seen rapid development. However, existing systems lack a crucial feature: keyword search, primarily due to file encryption. To address this limitation while maintaining privacy, significant research attention has turned to blockchain-based symmetric searchable encryption (SSE) schemes. However, achieving service fairness in the blockchain security model poses challenges, particularly in ensuring security for both users and service providers, while both can be malicious. To address this challenge, this paper introduces SEARCHAIN, a novel blockchain-based SSE system. We introduce a new role in the scenario, verifier, for the blockchain nodes. With the assistance of honest verifiers, service fairness can be guaranteed. We propose a novel committee selection algorithm for the system to select verifier committee members, ensuring their voting powers are proportional to the number of active SSE services they manage. Verifiers are required to perform result verification work for SSE services to participate in mining. With this approach, the committee selection algorithm provides both security and incentives for the system. We implement a prototype of SEARCHAIN and deploy the system to a local test network. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of SEARCHAIN.
KW - Blockchain
KW - Committee Selection
KW - Searchable Encryption
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105020237277
U2 - 10.1007/978-981-95-2961-2_19
DO - 10.1007/978-981-95-2961-2_19
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:105020237277
SN - 9789819529605
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science
SP - 368
EP - 384
BT - Provable and Practical Security - 19th International Conference, ProvSec 2025, Proceedings
A2 - Yang, Guomin
A2 - Liu, Shengli
A2 - Su, Chunhua
A2 - Otsuka, Akira
A2 - Lian, Zhuotao
PB - Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Y2 - 10 October 2025 through 12 October 2025
ER -